Hökaland

Politics, swords and blood

Introduction to Hokaland

This page is discontinued

Welcome to Hökaland!

This is a world of diplomacy, conflict, intrigue and conflict. It’s a fantasy world with a slightly dark tint and lots of opportunity to carve your own name into its core, or perhaps even alter its entire history!

The setting is similar to an early to mid medieval Europe (primarily) but has many related cultures mixed in throughout the lands. Forests are large and unexplored with big nasties living in them. Some parts are very developed and others are entirely backwards. People are religious and superstitious, and while the average person finds plenty of comfort in the Church of Rahn, they are equally afraid of The Sickle, the guild of wizards, and blame most problem on the men in robes.

Many different people walk the streets of Capitoleum, the (by far) largest city in the known world. Everyone wants a piece of the lucurative Capitoleum trade or to service its traders with goods, services or… services.

Believed by many to simply be reclusive humans, a people who call themselves “elves” infrequently visit human lands. These uppity paleskins which have pointy ears (apparently a custom from wrapping babies’ ears in linen during all of their childhood to make this particular shape) and often look on lowlanders with scorn. Truly amazing craftsmen and builders, they carved kingdoms out of the mountain peaks of the west.

Another “exotic” people are the dwarves. These are different than midgets and are simply shorter and stockier than humans with myths surrounding them, implying some magical past. They are open to superficial contact, but mostly keep their secrets in craftmanship to themselves.

The third “anomaly” amongst the people of Hökaland are the halflings. Most people simply believe them to be smaller dwarves, or at least originally part of the same culture, but they are different in many ways. They are open and jovial and while they don’t always spend enough time at one place to become respected craftsmen, they are great at fixing things. Though this reputation also comes with a darker one: Many know that halflings steal and some even believe they steal babies!

“Normal” men gather in kingdoms, and have done so for hundreds of years. While elves, dwarves and halflings come and go, kingdoms remain. Or, well, at least until the noble family is out-maneuvered or defeated in battle. Most the politics of Hökaland requires a light touch since many kingdoms are on equal footing in terms of power, and though armed conflict is rife, large scale battles are less so. If you send your whole army somewhere, someone else is bound to head in from behind.

The Game

Thank you so much for showing an interest in helping me test the rule system I have created for a future web-based strategy/intrigue game.

This is a pre-alpha version of a web-based game for fantasy strategy and intrigue with heavy PvP elements as well as a sandbox. The original idea came as I’m leading a Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying campaign in this world, and I felt it may be fun for players to play a whole house in politics and actually affect the world the player characters are in.

It became apparent my detailed-obsessed brain couldn’t handle making it overly simple, since I wanted unaware player interaction (players unaware who was playing what kingdom, and which ones I was playing) so the rules expanded and cover page after page in my notebook by now.

I was then inspired to make this into a web-based game to use in a portfolio as well as improve my programming skills, but making it so that the world itself could be replaced and perhaps even randomly generated for play between lots of players in lots of games simultaneously.

This game itself is meant to be tested as a strategy game which is relativeley easy to grasp the main concept of but with lots of depth and player interaction. Ideally it may be possible to play against an AI at a MUCH later stage.

This is pre-alpha and I’ll keep track of all data in spreadsheets on my computer and all the turns will be done via e-mail (read below). The background work may be complex, but the idea is that the game itself should not be.

You’d take over the role of a regent in a kingdom, sending orders to vassals as well as friends and foes in the world with the intention to protect your kingdom as well as improve your influence in the court, and thus the world.

6) A list of facts of your kingdom will be sent to you when the game starts, as well as a list of things you can do. At this stage the mechanics game are not finished, so I can “wing” anything you’d like to do outside of the standard set.

Most updates will be on Facebook, but if you have a question or game input (or later, your turn orders and letters) that relates solely to your kingdom, send it to my PM inbox at OP.

If you have general questions or feedback, please make a post in a thread here or make a new thread in this group.

For additional information, such as deeper knowledge of the game setting (the Midrealm in Hökaland), you can get it at the roleplaying campaign page I have which is placed in the same world. In fact, choices made by players in this game will affect the campaign setting for the players in the RP campaign! Either way, this is optional: